The American Pioneer

The American Pioneer By Hon. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior He landed at Plymouth Rock and with his dull-eyed oxen has made the long, long journey across our continent. His way has been hard, slow, momentous. He made his path through soggy, sodden forests where the storms of a thousand years conspired to block his way. He drank with delight of the brackish water where the wild beasts wallowed. He trekked through the yielding, treacherous snows; forded swift-running waters; crept painfully through rocky gorges where Titans had been at play; clambered up mountain sides, the sport of avalanche and of slide; dared the limitless land without horizon; ground his teeth upon the bitter dust of the desert: fainted beneath the flail of the raw and ruthless sun; starved, thirsted, fought; was cast down but never broken; and he never turned back. Here he stands at last beside this western sea, the incar- nate soul of his insatiable race — the American pioneer. Pity? He scorns it. Glory? He does not ask it. His sons and his daughters are scattered along the path he has come. Each fence post tells where some one fell. Each farm, brightening now with the first smile of Spring, was once a battlefield, where men and women fought the chok- ing horrors of starvation and isolation. His is this one glory — he found the way ; his the adventure. It is life that he felt, life that compelled him. That strange, mysterious thing that lifted him out of the primeval muck and sent him climbing upward — that same strange thing has pressed him onward, held out new visions to his wondering eyes, and sung new songs into his welcoming ears. And why? In his long wandering he has had time to think. He has talked with the stars, and ther have taught him not to ask why. He is here. *From an address delivered at the opening of the Panama-Pacific Ex- position. San Francisco, February 20, 1915.

THE AMERICAN PIONEER 165 He has seated himself upon the golden sand of this distant shore and has said to himself that it is time for him to gather his sons about him that they may talk; that they may tell tales of things done. Here on this stretch of shore he has built the outermost camp fire of his race and has gathered his sons that they may tell each other of the progress they have made — utter man's prayers, things done for man. His sons are they who have cut these continents in twain, who have slashed God's world as with a knife, who have glee- fully made the rebellious seas to lift man's ship across the bar- rier mountains of Panama. This thing the sons of the pioneer have done — it is their prayer, a thing done for man. And here, too, these sons of the pioneer will tell of other things they do — how they fill the night with jewelled light con- jured from the melting snows of the far off mountains: how they talk together across the world in their own voices; how they baffle the eagles in their flight through the air and make their way within the spectral gloom of the soundless sea; how they reach into the heavens and draw down food out of the air to replenish the wasted earth; how with the touch of a knife they convert the sinner and with the touch of a stone dissolve disease. These things and more have they done in these latter days, these sons of the pioneer. And in their honor he has fashioned this beautiful city of dreams come true. In their honor has he hung the heavens with flowers and pdded new stars to the night. In blue and gold, in scarlet and purple, in the green of the shallow sea and the burnt brown of the summer hillside, he has made the architecture of the centuries to march before their eyes in column, colonnade, and court. We have but to anchor his quaint covered wagon to the soil and soon it rises transformed into the vane of some mighty cathedral. For after all, Rome and Rheims, Salisbury and Seville are not far memories to the pioneers. Here, too, in this city of the new nation the pioneer has called together all his neighbors that we may learn one of the other. We are to live together side by side for all time. The seas are but a highway between the doorways of the nations. We are to know each other. Perhaps strained nerves may sometimes fancy the gesture

766 IMPROVEMENT ERA of the pioneer to be abrupt, and his voice we know has been hardened by the winter winds. But his neighbors will soon come to know that he has no hatred in his heart, for he is without fear; that he is without envy, for none can add to his wealth. The long journey of this slight, modest figure that stands beside the oxen is at an end. The waste places of the earth have been found. But adventure is not to end. Here in his house will be taught the gospel of an advancing democracy, — strong, valiant, confident, conquering — upborne and typified by the independent, venturesome spirit of that mystic materialist, the American pioneer. He